The author of the new book The Practical Pyromaniac on the brighter side of playing with fire. And, yes, how to make your own fireworks.

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My fascination with fire started in 1964 during a family road trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota just before July Fourth. Fireworks were illegal at home in Minnesota, so when we crossed the border into South Dakota, my dad, being the great guy he was, bought the family a "Project Mercury Fireworks Assortment" from one of the many fireworks shacks flanking the highway.

There were hundreds of different fireworks (or so it seemed at the time) in the package. The biggest were the skyrockets. Dad handled those himself. He said it was for safety reasons, but I think he liked them a lot and wanted the experience for himself. My sisters, both older than me, got their thrills from fountains and roman candles. My mom, however, so loved setting off individual firecrackers that Dad bought a separate brick just for her. The brand was "Yan Kee Boy" and the label on each pack featured two Asian lads waving Macanese flags in front of an ornate Buddhist shrine. I remember this well because after Mom lit the firecracker fuse she would run away, hollering, "Yankee Boy! Yankee Boy!" I thought this was standard operating procedure, so when it was my turn to light firecrackers and other pyrotechnics I, too, would yell, "Yankee Boy!" Now 89, my mother remembers Yan Kee Boy like she set it off yesterday. Yelling "Yankee Boy" is to our family what "Geronimo" is to the rest of the America.

Now, I make my own fireworks. It's easy to do and not unlike being a baker. The difference is that when you're done baking, you have, say, a loaf of egg-twist challah, and when you're done making fireworks, you have a skyrocket. Other than that, it's pretty similar. For this July Fourth, I made a few simple items — no elaborate aerial shells or star mines, just some gerbes, a handful of tourbillions, and a few line rats to keep the night going. Undoubtedly, I can buy better and more elaborate fireworks from the fireworks stands, but believe me, any fire you make is better than the fire you buy. Once you roll your own, there's no going back to store-bought.

It's not just the making of fireworks that fascinates me; it's the how and why of fire itself. Our scientific understanding of fire is based largely on the work of 18th-century scientists — Antoine Lavoisier, Joseph Priestley, Benjamin Rumford, Henry Cavendish, and John Dalton, to name a few of the most important. Despite their work, however, the average Joe has little idea of what fire actually is. Ask ten different people to define fire and you'll get ten different answers, and rarely the correct one: a high temperature, self-sustaining chemical reaction between oxygen and hydrocarbon fuel that produces carbon dioxide and water. While that's interesting to science geeks, most people are drawn to, even mesmerized by fire as a purely visual form.

After all, who doesn't love a friendly, under-control fire? Fires — in fireplaces, in furnaces, on stove tops, in our cars, in the Space Shuttle's rocket nozzles, in candles on the church altar or Sabbath table, in lemon-scented bug lamps on the patio, and at our campsites — fascinate and sustain us. Without fire, Homo sapiens never would have emerged from the caves.

Fire is the most important human-controllable chemical reaction on Earth. For hundreds of thousands of years, we and our proto-human ancestors have loved and feared fire. And on the whole, there is more to love than to fear. But when people ask me whether I'm a pyromaniac, the answer has become: no more (well, maybe a little more) than the next guy. Yes, I do like fire. But not in the pathological, over-the-top way that scares people. The reason I write about the subject I do is that — from Tesla coils and potato cannons to homemade gunpowder and fire kites — I figured out that, deep down, we are all pyromaniacs.

--William Gurstelle is a professional engineer who has been researching and building model catapults, ballistic devices, and flamethrowers for more than thirty years. He is the author of eight books, including, most recently, The Practical Pyromaniac. Follow him on Twitter at @wmgurst.